I found the following blog post about being a female gamer somewhat entertaining:
http://lostinazeroth.blogspot.com/2007/07/being-female-gamer-for-profitor-why-do.html
Here’s the bit that fascinated me the most:
Although it is reportedly not as common nowadays as it was in the earlier days of WoW, every once in awhile, I will receive whispered questions of “Are you really a girl?” or “What do you look like IRL?”. I usually just shrug them off, but sometimes the invitations can be tempting. If you are supposedly a true female AND a sexy race (Night Elf or Blood Elf in particular) the attention you may receive can be insane. Being offered 5G (which when you are lower levels can be a small fortune) to “talk dirty” to a male character or a purported male player, isn’t all that uncommon.
For those of you who are unfamiliar with WoW, it stands for World of Warcraft and it’s an online role playing game. The game itself costs around $50, and then you have to pay around $15 a month for a subscription so you can play online. I’ve never played myself, but I had a roommate who was hooked on it for a few months.
Anyway, the whole idea of spending fake money to have some supposed girl talk dirty to you reminds me of the whole “cybersex” phenomena that was big in the mid to late 90’s. I remember being 16 and having a couple of friends over and all they wanted to do was to get on the net and “cyber”. I remember it being this huge thing, I remember being asked several times by people, after they found out I had net access, “dude, have you ever cybered?” Nowadays I don’t get that question so much. In fact, I don’t think I’ve been asked that question since I was 16. I’d hypothesize that the majority of guys doing that kind of thing in WoW are just horny teenagers, though I’m sure there are older guys doing that too, which is a little creepy, and a little sad too, I suppose.
Internet perversity has grown much larger since the days of simple cybering, and talking dirty during gaming. Take for instance, Stickam, which is a website that allows you to engage in chats with multiple individuals with a webcam. Basically it’s a more visual version of MySpace.
I (actually my girlfriend) have a trolling account on the service, which uses images of a 20 year old girl, and I’m constantly bombarded with messages about “going private”, and by people wondering if I want to see them do certain things. A lot of the girls on the service are willing to expose themselves to people they don’t know over the internet for no apparent reason. I too remember the days of “cybering” and online girlfriends (not that I ever had any) as it was all the rage between AOL 3 and AOL 5. I’m interested to see where this type of activity goes, or what it evolves into in the next decade of internet revolutions and technological upgrades.
When I become a parent, and if I ever have a daughter, I’m making sure their are no types of video recording devices easily accessible.
I totally forgot about online girl friends! I don’t think I’ve heard anything about those since 97 or 98, though it may have just been an AOL thing.
Some women just go nuts in front of web cams, which is probably why there are so many horny guys asking for private sessions. I remember back when I was in college my roommate was talking to some girl who had a web cam – some random girl he’d met online, not one of those pay site girls – and she was doing all sorts of crazy things for him. I was totally shocked that she was willing to do this stuff for a complete stranger, especially since he never did anything for her (that I know of).
I don’t even want to think about having a daughter who might get into that kind of thing. I’m not sure what my limits will be, since kids like to rebel against rules that are put on them, but yeah, I won’t have any recording equipment lying around.
EDIT: As a side note, your trolling account has reminded me of a site I wanted to write about. I’ll make another post on it in a few minutes.